Microsoft announces Agentic web, an open-source platform to solve AI agent 'communication issues'

Microsoft has introduced a new open initiative called NLWeb at Build 2025, a foundational step in realising its vision for the open agentic web — a future where AI agents work seamlessly across services, platforms and devices on behalf of users and organisations. The company is positioning NLWeb as the HTML equivalent for the agentic web, providing a standardised way for websites and developers to make their content discoverable and usable by AI agents.

NLWeb endpoints function as Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, enabling conversational interfaces that interact directly with web content. This means users can engage with websites via natural language, using the model of their choice and their own data, opening up new user experiences where AI agents retrieve, process and act on information from the open web.

The open agentic web is tied closely to Microsoft’s broader efforts around MCP, a protocol the company is supporting across its platforms, including GitHub, Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry and Windows 11. Microsoft and GitHub have both joined the MCP Steering Committee and are contributing new specifications and infrastructure to the ecosystem. These include an updated authorisation specification that lets users grant agents secure access to data and services, and the launch of an MCP server registry service for publishing and discovering MCP-compatible endpoints.

As part of this shift, Microsoft’s focus is on ensuring that agent development, deployment and interaction are secure, standardised and interoperable. The open protocols and tooling are aimed at avoiding vendor lock-in while giving developers more control over how their agents communicate, authenticate and retrieve content from across the web.